[Coco] Help with The Magic of Zanth for CoCo 3

[Bill Loguidice]

I got directed to the hints I needed via Facebook. The hint worked, so the
version of Zanth I have is good. It's just a remarkably poorly designed
game. I guess to hide its short length, it kills you unless you make
incredibly specific and not entirely logical moves in a very precise order,
sort of like a classic Sierra game, but one designed by someone who
genuinely seems to hate its players. I was looking forward to trying the
company's other game, "Wild West," because again, taking advantage of both
512K and the Speech-Sound Pak are nifty tricks, but I'm wary now because of
how poorly designed Zanth is. Pity.

-Bill

===================================================
Bill Loguidice, Managing Director; Armchair Arcade,
Inc.<http://www.armchairarcade.com>
===================================================
Authored Books<http://www.amazon.com/Bill-Loguidice/e/B001U7W3YS/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_1>and
Film <http://www.armchairarcade.com/film>; About me and other ways to get
in touch <http://about.me/billloguidice>
===================================================


On Sun, May 11, 2014 at 5:51 PM, Bill Loguidice <bill at armchairarcade.com>wrote:

> *I'm still looking for help with the beginning of the game*, but to
> respond to Nick for a moment... I think it comes down to either having an
> affinity for classic synthesized speech or not. I always loved the sound of
> it and still do. I seek out such options for my collection for every
> platform possible. In fact, I wish it was easier to make more games -
> particularly text adventures - talk. It just adds something very
> era-specific to the experience that can't really be matched today. Today
> it's no big deal to have speech in games; that speech though is "real"
> speech, not generated on-the-fly. Certainly there were better solutions
> even in the classic era, but the ones that sounded better were generally
> limited to a small amount of phrases versus "unlimited" speech like you
> hear in the Zanth game.
>
> The expansion interface is clunky, agreed, but then these mass market
> consumer systems generally weren't meant to be internally expandable. Costs
> had to be saved somewhere. It's hard to compare an Apple II, which cost
> well north of $1000 to a CoCo or Commodore 64 that cost well south of $500.
>
> ===================================================
> Bill Loguidice, Managing Director; Armchair Arcade, Inc.<http://www.armchairarcade.com>
> ===================================================
> Authored Books<http://www.amazon.com/Bill-Loguidice/e/B001U7W3YS/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_1>and
> Film <http://www.armchairarcade.com/film>; About me and other ways to get
> in touch <http://about.me/billloguidice>
> ===================================================
>
>
> On Sun, May 11, 2014 at 5:35 PM, CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts <
> coco at maltedmedia.com> wrote:
>
>> On 12/05/2014 4:10 AM, CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts wrote:
>>
>>> Anyone play this 1987 CoCo 3 game from Computerware, The Magic of Zanth,
>>> before? I like to think I know my way around a game or two, but the scant
>>> instructions with this text and graphics adventure and my lack of
>>> familiarity with Anthony's world of Xanth that this is based on seems to
>>> have doomed me to failure right at the start.
>>>
>>
>> Does every game (are there many?) that used the speech part of the
>> sound'n'speech pack sound like a cyclon?  :)
>>
>> I've owned one of these packs for 20 years (bought cheap when they were
>> being cleared) and I've never used it.
>>
>> Firstly because there weren't enough games that used it (properly) and
>> because of my refusal to attach one of those god awful multi-crap kludges
>> on the side of my CoCo.
>>
>> The Apple II had nice internal slot expansion.
>>
>> The TRS-80 Model 1 had a nice tidy expansion interface under the monitor.
>>
>> The CoCo has this god awful "multi-crap" dongle on the side with odd size
>> cartridges and cables everywhere... not to mention the risj of blowing a
>> 6809 when it's bumped!
>>
>> Nick
>>
>>
>>
>> --
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>>
>
>